Here it is in a graphic... and if you are not on board with 90% of this, I am dismantling your head portion, putting it in a FedEx box, and sending it through a 2090 wormhole to Cyberdyne overnight.

 

Frege talks about “sense” which is essentially “the contextualization of bits.”

The word sense is synonymous with the 5 senses, which is the basis of all scientific inquiry, observation, logic and knowledge.

If you close your eyes, you can, from _NOTHING spawn a _SOMETHING called a “dog” _FORM and “see” it, or _SENSE it as a first-order definition that you can use in scientific inquiry. That dog is not composed of discrete bits, in the same way Siri Watson is not seeing the weather before she “talks” about it.

The dog exists in a colocated space between your ears as a “thought form.” This form is not located as discrete bits in the brain, period. It is in the domain of boundless 5D INFINITY, which is a concept that exists outside of discrete bits, and is supra-material, because the universe maxes out at 2^n bits.

If the dog could lose bits or pixels, it would LOSE ITS FIRST-ORDER DEFINITION, and therefore could NOT be used to identify or define other dogs, and create bits that represent the dog.

It must thusly be indivisible to retain its first-order reference definition. And this here is proof that thought forms (axioms!) are infinite in nature first. If not, there’s no knowledge, just “nonsensical and meaningless” bits.

Important: this is why we have QED on machine and INFINITY, so we can now say each form of mind is essentially the basis of “uninterruptably continuous” or boundless “infinibit” element. To _DEFINE is to spawn a new axiom from the “nothing” state of the 5D and it becomes a “something” state with “sense-able” properties.

You can continue to spawn more dogs off that dog and keep them discrete, label them, and do logic work on them! All while keeping the original dog indivisible! Give each dog a number, add them to create groups of dogs, different breeds, sets, and let 1 or more pee on your leg and spawn more objects effortlessly like _WETPANTS, remember each element discretely within this _SPACE, _TIME, etc. Welcome, “hard problem of consciousness! Your days are numbered!”

The “dog” in the “light,” are contextualized via _SENSE which is the supranumeric capacity to see an indivisible form in the mind, which is the basis of _KNOWING the dog exists _OUTSIDE the mind!

Are you able to see the light for the dog here and see where this can go?? I freakin hope so, man! It’s either this, or go back into the Wii as an avatar that doesn’t exist. Or, we start triangulating the 5D lexical framework and building a true model for reason! Excommunicate yourself from Brain Exclusive Church already and be alive!

 

IF the brain is limited to bits/numbers as its sole computational instrument and defining mechanism of the person who is supposedly representing it,

THEN

all of its references to such person and "things" are simply bits/numbers, and bits/numbers are POSITIVELY MEANINGLESS OR RANDOM to the medium storing them unless ANOTHER outside system attributes MEANING to them for THEMSELVES. The outside system must be something OTHER than bits/numbers, because again, same problem.

We haven't defined MEANING, and it seems like you're assuming consciousness in your use of it. Since consciousness is the elephant in the doll house, I find it useful to approach from the other way -- from things that few would describe as conscious -- and then see how functionally close I can get to things that people do think of as conscious.

A possible synonym for MEANING is referent. When I ask What do you mean?, I'm really asking What concepts are you referring to?

CONCEPT is a particular configuration of a set of sub-states. My concept of the color red started with a precept, a short-term configuration of sensory sub-states in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex induced by light of a particular wavelength. Over time, as I experienced different flavors of red, I developed a robust concept of red as a set of long-term states stored in memory. Importantly, the particular neural pattern of my concept of red is meaningful only to my brain -- to an outside observer, the pattern does not represent "red". In other words, the pattern itself is meaningless (in the absolute sense); what gives it meaning is the pattern's relationship with the rest of the patterns in my brain. This is made more clear below.

Computers can hold sub-states, thus computers can hold CONCEPTs. The only difference between a computer's concept of something and a human's is that the computer's set of relationships is programmed deliberately, whereas ours has been wired in over time through our genetic code. And by virtue of being able to hold CONCEPTs, computers can derive MEANING from otherwise arbitrary configurations of states. This is how my computer knows to treat a particular 32-bit sequence as a group of four ASCII characters, while treating another 32-bit sequence as an integer value.

 

Ah, but you’re forgetting something in the above. You don’t know what Boolean rings are per the constraints.

I mean, we could go through the effort of deriving boolean rings from first principles, but why bother? We've assumed standard propositional logic, and under that assumption everything I said is automatically true.

In any case, I wasn't using boolean rings and such within the model; it was part of our extra-model conversation on Boole.

I contend that the above is all abstract derivative invention, as Kronecker might. Sophisticated AF, but it’s not necessarily reflective of how things work at the very base level. I contend my proof says otherwise without invoking anything but the base, observational axiomatic elements built into human reason such as “add” and “logic OR” that a 6 y/o could employ.

On the contrary, if you accept propositional logic, you necessarily must accept the accompanying mathematical structures. They go hand in hand; they imply each other. There quite literally cannot exist a universe in which the logic is true but the math isn't.

 

We haven't defined MEANING, and it seems like you're assuming consciousness in your use of it. Since consciousness is the elephant in the doll house, I find it useful to approach from the other way -- from things that few would describe as conscious -- and then see how functionally close I can get to things that people do think of as conscious.

A possible synonym for MEANING is referent. When I ask What do you mean?, I'm really asking What concepts are you referring to?

CONCEPT is a particular configuration of a set of sub-states. My concept of the color red started with a precept, a short-term configuration of sensory sub-states in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex induced by light of a particular wavelength. Over time, as I experienced different flavors of red, I developed a robust concept of red as a set of long-term states stored in memory. Importantly, the particular neural pattern of my concept of red is meaningful only to my brain -- to an outside observer, the pattern does not represent "red". In other words, the pattern itself is meaningless (in the absolute sense); what gives it meaning is the pattern's relationship with the rest of the patterns in my brain. This is made more clear below.

Computers can hold sub-states, thus computers can hold CONCEPTs. The only difference between a computer's concept of something and a human's is that the computer's set of relationships is programmed deliberately, whereas ours has been wired in over time through our genetic code. And by virtue of being able to hold CONCEPTs, computers can derive MEANING from otherwise arbitrary configurations of states. This is how my computer knows to treat a particular 32-bit sequence as a group of four ASCII characters, while treating another 32-bit sequence as an integer value.

Again, though, all of that is discrete bits that have zero connection to each other! The computer (brain) “knows” nothing. It is a box of wires, switches, timers, sensors, and bulbs. None of what you discuss above can be defined in it. None of it.

 

You are a collection of gates, capacitors, wires and a counter on an old abandoned cutting board from the Unabomber's cabin. "You" are no where to be found.

There is no "concept of number." There. are. only. high. and. low. voltages.

A computer is an "adding machine" only! And it does so with the voltages that represent boolean logic states!

The collection of gates, etc. holds a CONCEPT (a set of long-term states) of "self". I'd guess that newborn infants do not have any notion of "self"; they're a brand new bundle of gates, etc. with most of its states zero'd out, as it were. But as the bundle of gates' sensors come online, it starts to fill up its long-term states with CONCEPTs. One of these concepts is that of "self".

Babies put there hands in their mouths. At some point in its development, a baby figures out that this soothing sensory experience is controllable. What's actually controlling it? The bundle of gates. As concepts are stored, some of the sensory states start becoming familiar. "Hey, that's my hand in my mouth." The notion of "self" is a result of the sensory feedback loop.

Where is the "sheep" in that whole getup (insert 900 question marks in 40 fonts here)?

The "sheep" is a CONCEPT, just like "self". It's stored in memory.

 

The collection of gates, etc. holds a CONCEPT (a set of long-term states) of "self". I'd guess that newborn infants do not have any notion of "self"; they're a brand new bundle of gates, etc. with most of its states zero'd out, as it were. But as the bundle of gates' sensors come online, it starts to fill up its long-term states with CONCEPTs. One of these concepts is that of "self".

Babies put there hands in their mouths. At some point in its development, a baby figures out that this soothing sensory experience is controllable. What's actually controlling it? The bundle of gates. As concepts are stored, some of the sensory states start becoming familiar. "Hey, that's my hand in my mouth." The notion of "self" is a result of the sensory feedback loop.


The "sheep" is a CONCEPT, just like "self". It's stored in memory.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how you figure this.

The voltages are nondescript and have no definability one to another!

On the table is your brain, with each neuron representing one or more bits, if you space them all out, none of them know anything. The “weather” is a concept in Siri that it’s aware of or “sees” different than any other bag of bits like wikipedia or wolfram alpha? C’mon man!!

The baby is an observer with basic sense of its surroundings... when the 5D starts to come online internally, it starts to map internal definitions to external... it automatically knows what a C major chord is and its relation to an F major. That’s why you don’t put a tritone in a crib, lest you breed Jason Krueger.

 

Yes, I very much do, because this is a classic case where, unlike something such as GR, it actually STARTS from real-world observation, not mental abstraction and complex theory.

You seem to be saying that propositional logic is a grounded, obvious universal fact, whereas boolean algebras are abstract "theory". (Ironic? Boole's Laws of Thought explicitly attempted to formalize propositional logic.) The problem with your notion is that propositional logic is exactly as abstract as boolean math -- one is not more "real" than the other. So, if you accept propositional logic, then you necessarily accept boolean algebras. There's no negotiating this!

And, as I demonstrated before, the OR of propositional logic is not "+", it is \( \vee \). Let me put it another way: If you believe that OR and "+" are the same, then you cannot believe in propositional logic, as the two operations are necessarily different. So, which one do you want to get rid of: propositional logic, or the equality of OR and "+"? You have to pick one, because there is no universe in which both can be true. (You can use propositional logic itself to show that this is true!)

Simple: If bits weren't both logic states and numbers, you couldn't load up a calculator app and calculate new values with it AND ALSO do if-statement evaluations in a compiler with the same bits. 100% facts and proof right there.

WTF? Take a stick of RAM and write voltages to its first three pins corresponding to "high, low, high". We'd say we've set its first three bits to "101". We can instruct a computer to use those bits in a calculation.

Now, write three other voltages to those pins. We can instruct a computer to use those bits in an if-else evaluation. What's the big deal? Where are the numbers? No where. We're instructing the computer to interpret the bits as if they represent numbers in the first case. In the second, we're instructing the computer to interpret the bits as if they were logic states. Aye?

 

You seem to be saying that propositional logic is a grounded, obvious universal fact, whereas boolean algebras are abstract "theory". (Ironic? Boole's Laws of Thought explicitly attempted to formalize propositional logic.) The problem with your notion is that propositional logic is exactly as abstract as boolean math -- one is not more "real" than the other. So, if you accept propositional logic, then you necessarily accept boolean algebras. There's no negotiating this!

And, as I demonstrated before, the OR of propositional logic is not "+", it is \( \vee \). Let me put it another way: If you believe that OR and "+" are the same, then you cannot believe in propositional logic, as the two operations are necessarily different. So, which one do you want to get rid of: propositional logic, or the equality of OR and "+"? You have to pick one, because there is no universe in which both can be true. (You can use propositional logic itself to show that this is true!)

We're getting rid of existing propositional logic then, and inventing a new one, because the hardware proves otherwise. I don't care what anyone says — the 0's and 1's as voltages are able to be used as logic states and base 2 numbers and added using "+" or "OR" (as in base-line human awareness of what those things mean). I don't care what towns we set on fire here, if 50% of it has to go, it has to go in the quest of an authentic ToE.

WTF? Take a stick of RAM and write voltages to its first three pins corresponding to "high, low, high". We'd say we've set its first three bits to "101". We can instruct a computer to use those bits in a calculation.

Now, write three other voltages to those pins. We can instruct a computer to use those bits in an if-else evaluation. What's the big deal? Where are the numbers? No where. We're instructing the computer to interpret the bits as if they represent numbers in the first case. In the second, we're instructing the computer to interpret the bits as if they were logic states. Aye?

Umm... Again, going back to the fact that you are a brain examining another "brain/computer." You are "bits examining bits."

What do you mean "where are the numbers?" Is not a calculator doing calculations with numbers? The numbers ARE the unique combinations of 0's and 1's! They're in base 2! And the same string can be used as logic states to evaluate against others. How do you know they're NOT numbers or logic states?

 

For the record, if someone with the stature of Kronecker can call into question all existing number theory and say "God created the integers, the rest is manmade contrivance" (and I think he was essentially on the right path) and also have the respect of others in the field, then we can do the same here with logic. You don't think you're as smart as him? You ARE Boole. And I'm Kronecker's secretary. So let's get this thing rollin'. Obviously there's *quite a bit of unexplored territory* in the infinity/consciousness/knowledge/reason space coming from a more logic/math/info theory approach (albeit bespoke). Mankind doesn't exist, thinks he does, and doesn't know what something is, but insists he does as a bag of wires hooked to a battery on a table. We got work to do.

 

We need to get this 100% straight, because I’m not sure how you are justifying attributing literally any knowability or concepts to Mario.

Until further notice, you are Mario: a collection of bits in RAM that can essentially be represented as pixels on a screen. Your brain has the bits stored. If you hooked up a screen to your brain, you could telegraph the bits stored to it. But your brain has no idea what it’s storing, no diff than RAM.

If the screen were laid out in a straight line with only 1D, those pixels would still light up reflecting “Mario.”

Properties of Mario:
1) composed of n number of discrete bits, each of which have no direct connection to any other
2) there is no “Mario” to the device containing the bits we are calling Mario
3) therefore there are no non-numeric axioms of any kind in Mario, has no concept of a concept, definition, knowing, reason, meaning, computation, logic, sense of any kind

What we are “calling Mario” is not being called Mario by any other Mario. Any other Mario, at absolute best, can be matched against another Mario solely to determine if the same bits that represent Mario 1 == Mario 2, and no Mario knows it’s a match, because a match is at best, another Mario.

The ability to consciously “know” what “Mario” is you can see and define in your mind’s eye is not possible with “more bits.” It goes back to a supra-numeric defining axiom that is supra-brain. If the pixels are close together enough, someone looking at the screen can identify the form as “Mario.” A “digital match” is different than “knowing there’s a digital match.” The digital match is in the domain of another brain. The ability to “know” there is a match is a supra-numeric interpolation mechanism.

The above is entirely non-negotiable. There are bits/numbers, and then there are axioms. Axioms are not “more bits/numbers.” If you sign on to the above, we can continue. If not, we are Hopeless in Seattle.

 

For the record, the above is precisely why I insist the brain “unit” is the starting point of delineating the nature of reason as mind/brain difference as the basis of a rational, ontologically sound ToE. It’s utterly Meaningless Mario all the way down until then.

 

And as a bit processor, you’re no diff than the cadaver.

Fundamentally, everything is just a set of states. In this sense, everything can store information, and the cadaver and I are no different. But not all subsets are the same. We've already distinguished LIFE subsets. We can also distinguish subsets based on their capability to process information. Such processes are state transformations, and some subsets of states are more fungible than others; that is, some subsets -- what we would recognize as information processors -- have the property that they can be transformed over and over. The cadaver is more fungible than a rock, but less fungible than a CPU or most humans with the LIFE property.

Because “information” that consists of binary bits without their representation is not really a complete definition of information.

INFORMATION is the configuration of a state. The more possible configurations (which we can measure in units of bits), the more INFORMATION a state can confer. Representations have nothing to do with INFORMATION. We know this because INFORMATION can be transduced and transferred through various representations.

Why are you showing partiality between the “signal” that represents “dog” and the signal that represents “light”? Or insisting one collection of bits has more _MEANING to you??

Then at the same time say Siri Watson doesn’t care, but “you” do? Huh?

What partiality? Information is transferred independently of what the receiver does with that information. When the "dog light" hits my eyes, a bunch of my brain states change. When the "UV light" hits the cadaver, a bunch of its skin states change. "Meaning" is irrelevant to the process of all of this happening. What we call "meaning" is the receiver's association between different subsets of states. I see a dog and a bunch of non-optical circuits in my brain get triggered; we say that the dog has "meaning" to me. Watson's language processing device hears "The most populated U.S. city" causing a bunch of other circuits to fire as it parses the words. These words have meaning to Watson, because it associates them with other substates, and it returns the answer "New York City".

In contrast, we don't say that the sunlight burning the cadaver's skin has meaning to the cadaver. The state of its skin cells react and that's pretty much it; no other of its sub-states are associated with the event. Nonetheless, information has been processed. "Meaning" and information are entirely different things.

 

Proposition: Without a definition for what something is, the scientific term “information” is incomplete.

Disagree, and I don't believe this disagreement makes discourse hopeless.

"What something is (as in really is)" may or may not ultimately be knowable. I'm pretty sure it is unknowable: our brain-sensor system filters everything we experience, and -- since we can't get out of the system -- we have no way of checking the veracity of the system. If we were Sims characters in a program, we'd have no way of knowing what the "real world" is like.

That's the fundamental epistemological black hole, and any notions to the contrary are just wishful thinking. However, though we can never know what's inside the black hole (i.e., how the "real world" actually is), we can in principle determine how "our world" behaves. And in our world, information seems to be a key component. We will probably never know what information is[/i], but we can surely catalog its properties and how it behaves.

The string 01011 might be information, but without an ontological correlation, it is fully meaningless.

What?! There is no ontology in saying that "01011" represents the number eleven. When we treat "01011" as the base-2 representation of the number eleven, we are not claiming that "01011" is the number eleven. Think about how absurd that would be, for in the very next second I could treat "01011" as representing the state of lights in my house. Does that mean that "01011" suddenly became something else just because I wished it so? What if we both look at the same "01011" sequence -- say, on a shared RAM chip -- and you treat it as the number eleven, while I treat it as the color red. What, then, is the ontology of "01011"?

Meaning is sollipsistic, reflects nothing about the world as it actually is, and has nothing to do with information. The sequence "01011" might have a billion different meanings at any given point in time. It's irrelevant what it "means".

 

...Any information processing machine is able to function by use of contrasting states of voltage (high and low).

The more accurate statement is "One form of an information processing machine marks state through the use of two voltage levels." This is by no means the only way of processing information. We can build computers that use any number of levels, including a "continuum" of levels. Analog computing through water pressure is a thing.

One of Alan Turing's great insights was that, once some minimum criteria are met, all the myriad forms of computation are equivalent. Binary digital computing is no more or less powerful than trinary digital computing, or 5-level digital computing, or "continuum" analog computing (with noise). The only reason binary computing has become so prevalent is because it's cheaper. Why go through the extra expense of using more complicated three-level switches when two-level switches are just as effective?

Proof: Any modern computer can use these states to compute with numbers of any set as well as evaluate logic states all the same. These are bits — a bit is a number and a logic state.

Counter example: Any modern computer can use three-level states to compute with numbers of any set as well as evaluate logic states all the same. These are trits.

You claim that this property as applied to bits is what makes a bit a number and a logic state. But the same property applies to trits. Thus, either both bits and trits are numbers -- and if this is true, then every base-n unit is also a number -- or neither are numbers. For any given n, a base-n unit is different from a base-k unit, with \( n \ne k \). For example, bits are different from trits. Therefore, neither bits, nor trits, nor any base-n unit is a number. QED.

 

And how the "+" operator is ENTIRELY EQUAL to the "OR" operator as is represented in the hardware empirically.

I think you'll be disappointed to learn that the hardware empirically disagrees with you.

The truth is, 1 + 1 = 0 is NOT true as-is. The circuitry proves this out. The proper boolean way of seeing 1 + 1 is

1 + 1 = 10

Not quite. Remember, if we want to do arithmetic that includes addition and multiplication, then we necessarily need a ring structure. If we're using the boolean ring over the set {0, 1}, then

1 + 1 = 0

Note that the set {0, 1} does not include "10" as an element, so "10" can never be a valid answer. If you want "10" as an element, then we need a boolean ring over {00, 01, 10, 11}. In this case,

01 + 01 = 10

This is all reflected empirically in hardware. A binary logic gate is a hardware device that accepts two single-bit inputs and produces a single-bit output. We combine binary logic gates to produce multi-bit outputs. If we want to add two bits A and B together, we use two gates: an XOR logic gate to do the sum (S), and an AND logic gate to produce the carry bit (C):



Please make note of this: you cannot use an OR gate to do the sum; you need an XOR. Both the math and the hardware show that logical OR and arithmetic "+" are different. There's really no use in trying to argue around this fact.

 

High quality replies, as always. So I have a legit counter argument for much of that, but instead of doing that, as I'm sure you'll agree:

I'm going to propose that anything other than the base preceptive building-block approach that found us agreeing on 2 base elements is going to be akin to a snake that only gets charmed in Ab, and which took 20 pages of discourse to find said key; if we change keys it gets angry, and 3 other snakes suddenly appear out of neighboring baskets in response, each with their own key they dance to, for which each take an additional 20 pages to identify and translate to a tune they'll in turn dance to, ad infinitum and nauseam. Considering COVID-20 may take us out by then, I say we make sure each snake in each basket is charmed-to-QED independently here on out. I say this very strict sandbox approach will see us exploiting cycles hella more efficiently.

So, our agreed-upon building blocks:

1) QED's on machinery/information processor with 2ⁿ limit
2) INFINITY as supra-numeric phenomenon

This is a VERY sound foundation.


So, for #3, I propose:

INFINITY represents indiscrete, unboundability. A bit is a discrete, bounded element. No n number of bits is modulating this definition or cascading into unboundability.

Can INFINITY as defined as the supra-numeric unbounded axiom truly be represented as a voltage or group thereof without compromising #2's definition?

 

Until further notice, you are Mario: a collection of bits in RAM that can essentially be represented as pixels on a screen.

Ok, so MARIO is defined as a particular state of n bits on a RAM chip.

Your brain has the bits stored.

The bits of what stored, MARIO? My brain does not have the MARIO state. If I see an image of MARIO on a screen, some of my brain's sub-states hold the concept of MARIO. This concept is a set of associated states that have been influenced by MARIO in some way.

But your brain has no idea what it’s storing, no diff than RAM.

Something stored MARIO in the RAM, and it "knew" what MARIO was (otherwise you are saying that MARIO was a random event). Likewise, my brain "knows" that it's storing something MARIO-like because of the optical reaction to MARIO triggered associations with other states in the brain.

Properties of Mario:
1) composed of n number of discrete bits, each of which have no direct connection to any other

This property needs clarification. The bits used to store MARIO in RAM are physically independent of each other. But when they hold MARIO, the bits are most definitely related to each other; their relation is precisely what comprises MARIO. In other words, by writing the state of MARIO to RAM, we've imposed an order on the bits that conveys information.

Think of it this way: MARIO can be projected onto a screen as an image. The optical neurons in my brain respond to this image because it contains information; the pixels on the screen are taken in relation to each other, and that information triggers a bunch of circuits in my brain. If, instead, the pixels are randomized, then the optical neurons in my brain detect no information -- each pixel is unrelated to the rest -- and nothing much happens in my brain.

2) there is no “Mario” to the device containing the bits we are calling Mario

No sure what this means. You defined MARIO as a particular state; this state was copied (presumably exactly) to RAM. Therefore, that sub-state of RAM is as MARIO as it gets.

3) therefore there are no non-numeric axioms of any kind in Mario, has no concept of a concept, definition, knowing, reason, meaning, computation, logic, sense of any kind

MARIO is a single state. CONCEPT is an association between multiple states. COMPUTATION is a processing of states. So, yes, I agree that MARIO has neither CONCEPT nor COMPUTATION. So what?

 

Here it is in a graphic... and if you are not on board with 90% of this, I am dismantling your head portion, putting it in a FedEx box, and sending it through a 2090 wormhole to Cyberdyne overnight.

Nice graphic, though it doesn't show how the conclusion follows from the premises. Also, I disagree with at least one of its premises.

 

If you close your eyes, you can, from _NOTHING spawn a _SOMETHING called a “dog” _FORM and “see” it, or _SENSE it as a first-order definition that you can use in scientific inquiry. That dog is not composed of discrete bits, in the same way Siri Watson is not seeing the weather before she “talks” about it.

Totally disagree. I close my eyes and imagine a dog. What's happening is that, having read your sentence, several sub-states of my brain are activated, including sub-states that are associated with my CONCEPT of "dog". The mental images I experience are not spawned from nothing; they were created, stored, and evolved from all my previous experiences of dog-related stimuli.

The dog exists in a colocated space between your ears as a “thought form.” This form is not located as discrete bits in the brain, period.

The "thought form" is just a set of sub-states. Being states, they can be described by n-bit strings. Such a description doesn't exist in my brain, but the states it represents does.

It is in the domain of boundless 5D INFINITY, which is a concept that exists outside of discrete bits, and is supra-material, because the universe maxes out at 2^n bits.

Perhaps it's about time you defined 5D INFINITY.

Excommunicate yourself from Brain Exclusive Church already and be alive!

If I have to be assigned to a church, I suppose it'd be the Church of Information. In this church, brains are just a very tiny subset of things that process information, only slightly more interesting than computers.